Coming Home from Deployment...

So, what do you write about AFTER the big adventure?  After you come home from "the edge of the earth"?  

Coming home.  Being back at home.  What is it like when you come home from a long overseas deployment?

The plane ride home is always tough...even when you get to fly in a nice commercial jet...those long flights around the world just take so much energy out of you.

Coming home is always so good.  You play it in your mind over and over when you are away, what it will be like when you come home.  And when you reach for your house keys that you have not used or seen in so long to open your front door of your house, it is so great.  As for me, two anxious little dogs were waiting for me once inside and they gave me a very big welcome!

Once in my house, and family has left, I sit there.  Dazed.  I made it home.  Home sweet home.   

Last year when I came home from my deployment to SW Asia my family had put some food in the fridge for me...but not this time.   No food in the 'fridge, or the kitchen.  Nothing.  So in spite of how tired I was, I went to the grocery store and bought some food.  Then home, and sleep...and sleep...and sleep.  

The next four or five days is a flurry of unpacking, doing tons of laundry, cleaning the house, opening months of mail, emailing and calling friends and family, and paying bills.

The hard part about coming home is getting back into "the world" again and finding your place again.  Strange as it may sound, it is a bit scary to see everyone again for the first time.  Last year when I came back from SW Asia, it was very difficult for me to 'make my appearance'.  So tired, so, so, something.  In my mind it was still 5 months ago here....but for everyone here at home, it is now.  

This time it was not so bad, I was gone only about 3 months.  One of my co-workers down in Antarctica said the hard thing about being deployed is that while away you become less and less relevant to the people back home.  Meaning, they learn to get things done without you.  Life goes on.  

The dust is still settling here in my house.  I am still not totally ....uh...I am not sure what word to use...not yet something.

It takes more than a plane ride home...to come home from a deployment.

Bye bye Antarctica!

Flying out on a C-130 "Hercules"

Yesterday I flew out of Antarctica in a C-130 (see photo), to Christchurch, New Zealand.  It was an 8 hour flight, and very loud!

Coffee House - Wine Bar

My last night there we had a get together - send off at McMurdo Station's little "Coffee House - Wine Bar".  It is (was) my favorite place to go and relax and socialize during my tour.  It is very cozy, and was actually the old Navy Officer's Club in a quanset / Jamesway hut originally built in the 1950s when the US Navy built McMurdo Station.  The place has sleds and other Antarctica memorabilia hanging on the walls and rounded ceilings.  This was the place where I was pinned / promoted to Lt Col when I first arrived here in September.   Many people stopped in to say goodbye.   It was a really nice send off.

I never did make it to the South Pole, really bad weather canceled all flights this last week, and that was that. 

It has been a most incredible tour, great ministry, amazing people...but I was there only a short time really.  I was able to visit... and experience a world and culture (yes McMurdo has a culture all its own!) that is just so different than any place in the world.  It is absolutely unique.  

See the photo (below) I snapped before I boarded the C-130.  We were on the ice runway, on the frozen ocean!  I am looking at Mt Erebus, an active volcano, not too far from McMurdo Station.  When I first saw it, it had smoke coming out of the top!  It is the word's most southern active volcano, and is over 12,000 ft high.

Mt. Erebus from the Ice runway

Notice how white, frozen and desolate the place looks.  BUT...as we know, things are never the way they may first appear.   It may look like frozen wasteland devoid of life...but  In Antarctica all the life, (well 99% of it anyway) is beneath the ice.  Vivid colors, plants, animals are under the Ice.  Things and time seems to move in slow motion because it is so cold...but it is moving.  Ice burgs slowly melt into the frozen sea, glaciers slowly move down valleys...even waves, frozen in time do move.   Starfish move so very slowly, but they do move.  Even the seals and penguins...their food and thus life, is under the ice.

Interesting spiritual thoughts to reflect upon in our own lives.....What life lies 'beneath'?   What is in, or going on in our own lives...but we may not be seeing?  First appearances can be deceiving....

Many people touched my life there in McMurdo.  One man said to me as we talked, telling me of the reactions people gave him back in his home town when he told them he was going to McMurdo Station, Antarctica for 6 months to work.  That "what?" look (you know, that sort of annoyed look people give when they don't understand) and say "Why?"  or "There's nothing down there!"

Oh yes there is!

I had similar responses too.  One response I got was, "What?  People don't go to Antarctica!!

Oh yes they do!!

Yes, I will be processing this experience for many months and many years to come!

Bye bye Antarctica!

The Ice, Science and the Midnight Sun

Walking on the Ice, the frozen ocean, Antarctica!

Today is a warm sunny day (warm spell here, it is 21 degrees F!) so I walked out onto "the Ice", the frozen ocean. 

I have been here in Antarctica now going on seven weeks.  It is much different here now than it was when I first got here.

First of all, the sun now is up 24 / 7.  The sun spirals around in the sky and does not set anymore.  The last sunset here was on Oct 24th.    When I first got here end of September it was also much colder, windier, and the light was more like twilight.  But now it is very bright.  Day and night, it is bright sunlight, the Midnight Sun.

The other big difference is that now there are so many people here, about 1200 or so.  When I first got here,  there were only about 300 or 400 people.  So the pace and activity level is now much more intense!

Sea Urchins at Crary Lab

A starfish in the Crary lab, animals that live under the Ice

They put in a tube  that goes down into the ocean and under the ice so you can climb down in it and see under the water.  Many have seen seals, fish, the divers, etc.  So I climbed down there, about 25 to 30 feet down in a small tube (not for the claustrophobic) that looks like going down into a manhole from the frozen ocean top down into the water under the ice.  It was pretty wild seeing the ice up top and looking at it from underwater!    I saw some teeny tiny fish, but no other wild life.  Darn!  I still have not seen one penguin here!  I have seen a few Skua birds (aggressive seagull like birds) but no penguins or seals.

Piston Bully, vehicle you travel in on the Ice

Tonight I will attend a science lecture at the Crary lab on penguins!  Every week Crary lab has lectures by the scientists who are doing research projects here.  

See the Piston bully, the little red vehicle with tracks, this is one way they travel out on the ice to get to various remote locations to do their research, wherever it may be here in Antarctica.  Other ways of travel are helicopter and C-130s. 

If you would like to read more about the research projects and the science here, go to the United States Antarctic Program website.  Here is the link:  http://www.usap.gov/

McMurdo also has a live webcam, check it out!  Link:  http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm 

I am now winding down my 60 day tour here and preparing for my replacement to arrive tomorrow.  

I am here only a few more days...

A harsh continent...but an incredible community

Chapel of the Snows...backdoor

They call Antarctica the "harsh continent".... and it is.  In every way, this place is harsh...physically, mentally and spiritually. 

Many have lost their lives here, the early and first explorers.... even to this day. 

But still, people come here from all over the world....to explore, to research, to work, to see this place...it is one of the last frontiers on the earth. 

Last week four died in a helicopter crash, they were from the French Station over at Dumont d'Urville, Antarctica.   It impacted many here at McMurdo Station...as we all feel the pain...for the people who live and work here in Antarctica, it is a unique community. 

The people here amaze me.   They work long hours, in this freezing and ever changing weather....in very dangerous conditions doing very dangerous missions.  Plus that, the people here live in dorm rooms, with little or no privacy, with one or two or more roommates and a shared bathroom.  And they WANT to be here!  Not to mention the many who actually go to stay for extended periods out on the Ice and research camps and live in tents, in the freezing cold outdoors! 

Memorial Service

As I mentioned in a previous post, many come here year after year. 

Why do they come here year after year?

Because of the community.   This place is like no other.  A very unique place, and I am not talking about the fact that it is Antarctica.  It is the people, the community.

It is the support people give each other...it is the understanding and camaraderie of the many here who have been many places around the world...living between two worlds... back home wherever that may be and here coming back and forth every year.   For what can we do, what can we say when there is suffering?  Pain.  Loss?

There really is nothing one can do.  Except just be there for each other.   And that is really what it is all about.